It's easy to feel defeated in the face of political challenges, but this episode shows that everyone has the capacity to create positive change and contribute to a culture of peace in their communities. In her book "Peace by Peace: Risking Public Action, Creating Social Change," Lisa Silvestri shows how ordinary people addressed issues in their communities form the West Bank to Baltimore.
Silvestri found those stories through a process she calls "crowdsourcing hope" and found that deliberately seeking out peace led her to discover more and more of it. The book is grounded in the Ancient Greek virtue phronesis, which Silvestri explains in the interview. We also discuss how not all social action needs to be political — and why it might be better if it's not.
After the interview, Cyanne Loyle and Candis Watts Smith discuss the power of using what frustrates you as an impetus for change, and how finding common cause can be more effective at reducing polarization than finding common ground.
Silvestri is an associate teaching professor of communication arts and sciences at Penn State.
Episode Transcript
Cyanne Loyle
For the McCourtney Institute for Democracy at Penn State University, I'm Cyanne Loyle.
Candis Watts Smith
I'm Candis Watts Smith.
Jenna Spinelle
I'm Jenna Spinelle, and welcome to Democracy. Works this week, we are talking with Lisa Silvestri, who is an associate teaching professor of communication, Arts and Sciences here at Penn State, and author of the book, Peace by Peace: Risking Public Action, Creating Social Change. These are everyday folks who are taking actions to create peace in their community. And you know, this is a time when I think a lot of people aren't feeling very peace oriented or thinking that that change is is possible. And I struggled with whether or not we should even put this episode out right now, because in some ways, it feels like we're, you know, not, not addressing the elephants many of them in the room about what's what's happening with our democracy and our politics. But I also think, and anyone who's listening to the show for a while will know that, you know, I tend to err on the side of finding hope and orienting toward action. So I think Lisa's book is as good a primer as any that we've had about how people can find the possibility for change in their lives and their communities.
Candis Watts Smith
So I am really pleased that we are talking about this today. And I think it's a clutch I think it's a clutch move. I think it's a necessary move. And I actually think it does speak to the elephant in the room, um, one of which is that people are sad, that people are overwhelmed, that people have made a note. That, you know, after the you know, 2016 election, and in 2017 there was like this wave of resistance from the Women's March and, you know, March for Science and you know, anti gun March, you know all of that. And people have noted that we aren't seeing that same kind of movement. Now, to be sure, there are plenty of people who are perfectly and, you know, elated by the moment that we're in. And that's how democracy works. There are winners, there are losers. Some people are happy, some people are not happy. But I think that the topic around peace, peace building, and what everyday, average people can do to move the needle in whatever direction they see fit, I think, is just what we just what we need right now.
Cyanne Loyle
I completely agree with you, and I love the way in which the stories that Lisa is going to talk about reflect individual people and the ways in which kind of individuals can can move the needle right on democracy and their communities, but also how they all all of these stories start with smaller kernels of things that people are interested in or that bother them or that they want to Change, and it is those kind of small kernels of things that sit uncomfortably with people that then turn into, in some of these stories, really big movements, right, really large kind of change, you know, accesses or agents or something like that, in terms of, yeah, individual neighborhoods and communities. So I think it's a very non partisan message, right? That that all of you know, we can look around the world and find lots of different things that that we consider to be areas where we can step in and fix and actually make change. So, Jenna, you're absolutely right. This is a hopeful message and well timed.
Candis Watts Smith
One other thing I think that stands out, and it will come out. And the interview is about the sentiment that she refers to as drift, and that is also non partisan, right here. The idea is that, you know, people are kind of experiencing this kind of aimlessness, this sense of detachment, and this is also something that we've talked about over the seasons, about the extent to which people feel connected to other people. And, you know, I walking around campus, you know, often see students, you know, with their headphones on and they're just in their own world next to someone else in their own world. And there's a, you know, I just kind of noticed the way that people don't feel like they are with other people and and not to get to. Not to go down the back down the pessimism side too quickly. We have, you know, a good amount of time to get to that. But it's disconcerting for me, and especially when we read about how democracy declines. Like, yes, there's policies and yes, there are leaders, but there's also that lack of connection with one's neighbors as an important step in that decline.
Jenna Spinelle
Yeah, and I think we'll also get into exactly what she means by peace building. It might be a different conception of peace than you might be thinking about right now, or some of the stereotypes associated with peace. So yeah, lots of compelling stories here. I'm excited for everyone to hear them. So let's get to the interview with Lisa Silvestri.
Jenna Spinelle
Lisa Silvestri, welcome to Democracy Works. Thanks for joining us today.
Lisa Silvestri
Thanks for having me
Jenna Spinelle
Really excited to talk with you about your new book, piece by piece, and the field of peace building more broadly, I was thinking back on, I don't think we've done an episode on peace building in 200 and some democracy works episodes. So looking forward to digging into that with you a bit today. But you know, your book starts off with your you talk about growing up listening to the music of the 1960s Pete Seeger and Peter Paul and Mary and Joan Baez. And I think that is when you say the word peace in America, that is maybe the time period that comes to people's minds. You know, Woodstock and anti Vietnam protests and all these kinds of things. But your conception of peace is broader than that. I wonder if you could just start there. What? What does peace mean to you? How do you think about it in the context of this work?
Lisa Silvestri
I think I, I'm intrigued by your use of the term broader, because I think of it almost as smaller, like more ground level, quotidian. Um, that music, of course, was writing in the context of war, but they were writing about folks. It was folk music. And so when I conceptualize peace in this book, I do, I think you know for I guess I'm old enough now to say that I've been writing about war for more than 15 years. And so that was kind of my first exposure to peace. It was always in the context of war and war fighting. And in that scenario, peace is figured as the absence of war or and so that just never sat well with me, that peace is the mere absence of violence. And so I started thinking about, well, what is peace? What are these singers singing about? Give peace a chance? Well, what would that look like if I had to point to it? And so I started thinking about peace, not as mere absence, but as an active, sustained, dynamic presence. And that's I start to define peace more as a verb. So peace is something that we do. It's something that we build. It's not mere absence. Is a active, engaged presence that requires our attention and activity. And so I define peace as the as bringing about the conditions that sustain or support human and planetary flourishing.
Jenna Spinelle
Yeah, and there's, I like your focus on the collective too, because I think that we, and maybe this, this is a byproduct of our sort of hustle culture peace is is often also associated with, like inner peace and physical peace, and like headspace app meditations that you have to pay to take or something like that. But I think the the focus on the collective there is an important one as well.
Lisa Silvestri
I mean, it's something that we do that peace isn't passive, even pacifism is not pacifism.
Jenna Spinelle
So your book is a collection of what about eight or 10 different stories of people around the world who are doing peace. And I'm very curious how you found these folks. You literally traveled all across the globe and got to really do some great reporting and put on your journalism hat and meet these folks. So how did you find these stories?
Lisa Silvestri
I guess, if I had to describe my method, I was crowdsourcing hope. I it was 2018 and I just had my first baby. So I was a new mother, and I was living out in Washington. I was a professor at Gonzaga University at the time, and it was the summer of 2018 and the city ordinance just came down that we had to stay indoors because of the wildfire smoke, and so the before the pandemic. So this was my first. Experience of stay home, safe, safe orders, because it was really that intense, like I couldn't see my mailbox at the end of my driveway, and so I'm stuck indoors with this new baby, and I'm listening to the news, and it's not sounding good. I'm hearing about kids in cages at the southern border I'm hearing about, of course, the wildfire smoke, you know, corruption and sexual assault charges, just this awful stuff. And I have this little baby looking back at me. And, you know, I think I just had to help the world get its act together. And I didn't know how to do that. I knew I needed hope. And so I just started with an email, and I just populated the recipient list with all of the kind, like do gooder type people that I know, all the artists and philosophers and like, just these great creative people. And I basically said, Do you know anyone doing anything good? Oh, she, can you give me some good news? And then I started getting responses and contacts and references. And then from there, I just started cold emailing, cold contacting. And when I could I would set up interviews, and I am trained in in field work and ethnography. And so going and being in this space, meeting the person, seeing what they're doing on the ground, was something that was important. And I could travel then, because it just got in there before the pandemic. And you know, each person that I met could sometimes refer me to another person. I mean, in qualitative research, it's called snowball sampling, but really it was just crowdsourcing hope.
Jenna Spinelle
So what I mean, as as you're going through, I imagine there was some kind of process where you start off with a large group of people, and then narrow it down and down and down, like, what? What was the difference between a story that you ultimately pursued for the book and one that didn't? Were there certain characteristics that that emerged as you started to talk to these folks?
Lisa Silvestri
Yeah, so I, I did about a dozen, I think, formal interviews, and there's a word in qualitative research called saturation. You know, you've reached saturation when you start hearing the same thing, like you start almost being able to anticipate what the person's gonna say, even if it's different, you know, but roughly the same kind of thing. And so I had reached saturation at like a dozen, where I'm like, there's a lot in common. These people have some sort of similar something, yeah, like, what? And so then that's the work of grounded theory of like, well, what is it? And I recalled this capacity that I learned about in graduate school when I was studying the classical rhetorical tradition, which is called phronesis, that's with a pH. That's what makes it cool. Phronesis with a pH, and it's a virtue that the ancient Greek philosophers so think, like Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Gorgias, that it's a capacity for practical wisdom that they believe exists in all of us. But more than that, it's something that can be cultivated and developed and strengthened and learned. And when I studied phronesis in graduate school, it sounded like a superpower like, what? How do these people know one one translation of it is doing the right thing at the right time for the right reason? Wow, that sounds incredible. And so it always stuck with me graduate school, you kind of the semester ends, you move on, and then I'm writing for the next like 10 or so years about war and some of the darker manifestations of human behavior. And I had never forgotten about it. And so when I crowdsourced hope and I interviewed all these folks, I was like, I think that's what this is. I think these people are wise. I think they're doing peace through practical wisdom. And so once I had a theory, a theoretical framework, to kind of hold these folks together, then I was able to select just eight stories that really illustrated this capacity that I was trying to unpack.
Jenna Spinelle
So these are, if I'm recalling the stories in the book correctly, they're largely not political projects. And so I think, especially as we record this a week or so after the election, I think there's a lot of thought about. Like, we need to organize politically, right, and we need to do these things. But I think that there's maybe good, like, as you show, lots of good that can come from doing this work in a way that is maybe explicitly or not, regardless, not really political, or focuses on things other than politics.
Lisa Silvestri
Yeah, I think that's one thing, is that they're refreshingly apolitical. Um, they are just ordinary people like you and I, just doing work within the limits of their own tether, um, and so, yeah, I don't, I think they don't really identify as activists or peacemakers. They're not part of any sort of grander social movement. They're just doing the next right thing. And so that, you know, I like one of the things I love about your podcast is that you really show that democracy, the heartbeat of democracy, isn't in the halls of Congress, it is in the footsteps of everyday people on the streets. And so I think this book kind of takes up that, that heartbeat as well.
Jenna Spinelle
So this from nieces, idea that that you referenced earlier, the the folks that you profile like did it was that you got a sense it came naturally to them, or something that they had really worked to achieve? And if you can maybe give an example, I know we haven't talked yet specifically about some of the stories in the book.
Lisa Silvestri
Yeah, I think what's great about these people is that they're there's nothing special about them. They aren't Gandhi, they aren't Mother Teresa, they're me and you. And I think they really reflect this capacity that we all have in us. When you think of yourself as a child, you were so you weren't quite rigid, yet you were so open and porous and curious. And so I think that's an aspect that these people, yeah, they have cultivated, but maybe also they haven't quite let go of themselves. And so that's just how they move through the world, goaded by that open, openness and that willingness to say yes, and that kind of improv technique, like, you know, maybe I could be of benefit.
Jenna Spinelle
And that really struck me that yes. And you, as we were preparing for this interview, you asked me what my favorite story was from the book, and I told you it was Drew matat. Hopefully I'm pronouncing that correctly, and I think he really has this, okay, I'm just gonna go and do this and keep building and keep building. So if you wouldn't mind, can you just share a bit of his story with us and how he exemplifies some of these concepts we've been talking about.
Lisa Silvestri
Oh, Drew. Okay. Yeah. He is a paper maker, which I had never heard of until I met him. He was a college student, just like the students I teach. He was majoring in the fine arts, and he got exposed to a paper making course, which he was not excited about taking at first. And he had, I mean, the feminists would tell us, the personal is political. So he had really personal, meaningful experience with making paper out of his his father, who had died while he was a child, his father's old blue jeans, and making paper out of that. And this the transformative process of cutting up something that holds so much emotion. Cutting it up, shredding it, pulping it, turning it into paper, and then printing these beautiful books for his family members. And when he presented his uncle with the book made of which it was his uncle's brother, blue jeans, his uncle was just so deeply touched. And out came all of these stories of childhood, and that was when Drew was like, Oh man, like this is, this is more impactful than having show a show up in a gallery and having people kind of shuffle by and appreciate your artwork. This is like, really getting people to have some sort of personal transformative experience. And so he kind of just became curious about that, and he he graduated, and, like, opened a studio, this, like, kind of subterranean warehouse studio that was really cheap rent, and he divided it up, and he made it like kind of a co op space for all these artists to come. And he had paper making workshops trying to teach other people the art of paper making. And he had a veteran come and again, like the veteran had this really transformative experience. And I think. That was just it for Drew. He's like, Well, I just have to keep bringing paper making to the people. And he didn't have a goal, like, he wasn't like, Oh, I'm gonna start a non profit, or I'm going to, like, create a mission statement or anything like that. He just was just doing it and scraping together money from volunteers and, you know, folks in the community who saw the merit and what he was trying to do and went from there.
Jenna Spinelle
And I also like that he, if I'm recalling correctly, he just picked up and moved to Germany too, sort of without really knowing anything about the area or knowing anyone there?
Lisa Silvestri
And he, yeah. So he, he found that it's easier to be an artist, not in the United States, we don't really value Art. And In Europe, they recognize the contribution of fine artists. And so he was just able to sustain himself better there. And he still he, I think he just passed his German level, one language. He's been there for, I think, almost over 10 years now, and he just got recognized by the German government as a fine artist, and so he now has that, that security of having health care and things like that, which he had been operating without for 20 years.
Jenna Spinelle
So you are still in touch with these folks that you, you talked to back in 2019 How have they fared through the pandemic? Are they? Do they still have that sense of phronesis? Has it been dimmed at all, given everything that's transpired over the past five years?
Lisa Silvestri
I mean, I'm still in contact with all of them. They, for me, they're the co authors of this book, and so they, I wish you were interviewing them instead of me. I am still in contact with all of them via text and email. The pandemic naturally makes us have to shift. Drew, of course, started offering online tutorials and making those like free and public. But even beyond the context of the pandemic, one of the stories is about US Marine, a veteran, an ex Marine, who was working with farmers in Afghanistan to get saffron into the market, global market, and we pulled out of Afghanistan, which really complicated things for him with banking and stuff like that, but he's muddled through another story, Gen Bromberg, who's working to clean up the river Jordan, now has a formal war in his backyard. I mean, he had been navigating intifadas for for decades. And so that's one thing that's really empowering about these stories, is that phronesis, or that capacity for practical wisdom, comes from within and not from without. And so these folks have been able to continue to act as if and to keep addressing things as they unfold, even when circumstances change beyond their control.
Jenna Spinelle
That's that's a perfect segue into something else I wanted to ask you about, which was this idea of bridge building, which our listeners are likely familiar with. It is, I think often talked about it in a more political context, like bridging partisan divides. And there's a whole field of organizations that do this work. But that seems to me that that is, I don't know if it's like all peace building is bridge building, but not all peace building is bridge building, like one of those kinds of things, I guess. How do you think about the the relationship between those two?
Lisa Silvestri
So I was careful to avoid the the term peace building in this because, again, like my exposure to peace coming in the context of war, peace building is often the way people talk about post war situations. And so when I think of peace building, I think of some strategy, like a grand strategy. I think of it as responsive to a particular set of needs in a post war, post conflict scenario that it just has more boundaries around it, even, like, temporally, right? Like we're gonna, we did war fighting, and now we're gonna do peace building. And I mean, I guess, to answer your question, I think that bridge building is a is a part of peace building. But again, like, even with you. Bridges that keeps us on either side of the river right, and we're gonna come together in the middle, and we're gonna do this thing. But what if, like, the writing that I've done alongside this book is like, what if we don't want to set our differences aside? What if we don't want to forgive and forget? What like? Is there something we can do? How do we build coalitions? And coalition is the term that I like, I think, more than bridge building. How do we build coalitions across difference that sees our difference as an asset, as opposed to like trying to transcend difference. And I think that that's something cool that lent observed is that it wasn't that these folks are like, coming together and singing Kumbaya and being like, let's let bygones be bygones. They aren't. They're just they're still different, and that's okay, that they can, they can coalesce in the community without giving up that part of themselves. And this is where I take this ancient Greek concept of phronesis, and I look at it through the lens of intersectionality, which is like the language that was a gift to us from black feminist scholars that recognizes that we are all this constellation of identities related to power and privilege, and so then the work becomes not, how do we set aside those differences, or imagine that we all are one or have This like, same identity, but like, how do we align ourselves in a way that disperses or diffuses power structures so it accepts like we have to work within the existing power dynamics? How can we diffuse? How can we co align ourselves in ways that diffuse some of that power, redistribute that power, and so that's kind of why I balk at bridge building as a metaphor, because I just think we've been talking about that for a long time, and I haven't really seen it like a temporary outside of a temporary, goal oriented thing, whereas, like the piece that I'm talking about is just, it's more open, is less in response to a particular situation. It's just a way of being in the world.
Jenna Spinelle
As people are listening to this, I'm sure they're thinking, Oh, well, I would like to get involved in in one of these kinds of things, if not, maybe start something myself in my community, or maybe join up with something that that's already there. So I have a couple questions for you in that realm, like, what are some of the things that prevent people from engaging in this kind of work?
Lisa Silvestri
I don't know if I have a good answer for that, in part because there are a lot of answers, fear, laziness, lack of imagination. Um, I, I think that's why I have risk in the subtitle. It's called piece by piece, risking public action, creating social changes, because it is a risk. What the folks in this book are doing is irrational. It's hard to explain. It's not lucrative. And so like we, especially in the United States, have such a distorted idea about success. And so I think, you know, when people think about doing something like this. They're thinking not from like, is this the right thing to do? They're thinking of like, well, how will others perceive what I'm doing? How will I explain this to my parents or my friends or loved ones? But if you can kind of just let that part go and just do the next right thing, even if it seems impractical. I, you know, I think that's how you start. Yeah.
Jenna Spinelle
So one last thing here, Lisa, you know, as I'm sure, I hope people will listen and read your book to explore all these stories that we didn't have time to get to today. But are there other things that you would recommend listeners do to try to do a little more piece in their own life, or incorporate some of these concepts? Yeah,
Lisa Silvestri
I mean, so in the book, I the book ends with a bunch of discussion questions. I also have a free to download online, like teaching guide for if you want to have workshops, or some sort of classroom adaptation. I think that where it starts is with this self knowing, like intersect. Rational self knowing so I give at the end the last chapter of the book is where I try to have a parting gift for the people who have made it 140 pages in. And the party favor I offer is this, like tri part mode of inquiry, where it's contemplation, interpretation, imagination, and so the questions associated with those modes of inquiry are, what's going on? That's contemplation. What do I make of it? Interpretation and what's possible, imagination. And so, like, really, just starting there is where you kind of get yourself into a position to be able to do meaningful public action. And I think, you know, I alongside war, I've been studying social media, social media at war, that was my first book. And, um, I think that young people today have gotten so disembodied because they put the brand cart before the horse that they don't necessarily look around and pay attention to things that bother them in their everyday life. One of the stories starts with a woman just making the mirror observation that, hey, on an evening drive in the summer, there aren't as many bugs on my windshield. That's contemplation what's going on. And then she let that bother her, and she moves to, well, what do I make of it? Like? Are there less bugs? Oh, gee, yeah. I mean, I guess we, we don't have as many plants to feed the bugs, and so you know what's possible. And then she just started, like renegade gardening, like she just started throwing wild flower seeds in unused lots in her neighborhood. And so it just starts from there, just taking notice of what you're bothered by. I try to use that as a prompt in my classes, instead of what interests you, because interests are so fickle. This is why I never get a tattoo. Is because I'm too fickle. Like, what I like is always changing, but what bothers me there's a constant thread, like, even from childhood, you know, being bothered by like injustices on the playground, or people being left out right like you, those things that bother you take different shape, but they have that similar essence. And so I think even if folks don't read the book, though, I really hope they do reflect on what bothers you, and maybe that could be a New Year's resolution of, like, trying to respond to the things that bother you, yeah, in a way that feels honest to yourself.
Jenna Spinelle
Yeah. That's a great way to think about it. I'm definitely going to use that in my classes, and maybe some of our listeners will too. We will link to piece by piece in the show notes so folks can pick it up. Lisa, thanks so much for joining us today. You.
Cyanne Loyle
Well, I thoroughly enjoyed that discussion, and I thought we should come back and start immediately with with a concept of with this concept of phronesis. So it was the thing that Lisa was talking about that that really jumped out to me the most. And I think that, yeah, I think it just was such a impactful way to think about the importance of these small, positive changes that the individuals in her book are are exercising, but also a way that we can think about changes in our own life. So this idea of doing the right thing at the right time for the right reasons, I think, is just a really powerful concept. But even more than the idea that that we could do this is the idea that we can cultivate it, and that we can we can grow to be a type of person who responds in this way. And so that was the thing that really struck me, and where I would like to start our conversation, was these kind of micro interventions that you can make into these larger kind of, maybe sometimes seeming like insurmountable problems, but yet come from observations about which days of the week community members attend dance classes and things like that.
Candis Watts Smith
Yeah. I mean, so she talks about phronesis as a practical wisdom and as the capacity to figure out a practical course of action that, like you said, is, you know, ethical and noble. But I think the the part that I that what makes this conversation so clutch right now is that she also talks about its use in necessity, in unusual and complicated situations, which. I think that many of our listeners would agree, or would say, assess the moment as that, when you feel like the news cycle is bringing issue after issue after issue that you know, like people can feel like, well, what am I supposed to do? The other thing that, why I'm, you know, really kind of glumming on to these ideas is because she says, like, sometimes these actions can feel irrational or impractical, right? Like the problems are so big, are so twisty turny that sometimes doing. And a little thing can seem like, why are you doing that? But the examples that she gives is that these small things can be big for somebody else, that they can be meaningful, that they can be creative and inventive, and kind of, you know, gives us practice to having a growth mindset when, when you are getting all sorts of messages that almost nothing like that things are inevitable, and we know that That's not true. This kind of just gives us a view.
Cyanne Loyle
The other kind of component i wanted to highlight, in addition to this idea of of curiosity, is that so many of these stories come from the idea that you identify what's bothering you. And I just love that way of thinking, because I often, you know, students will say, you know, I don't know what I want to be when I grow up, or I don't know how I can help my community. And I think that the default answer is like, well, what are you interested in? Like, what are your passions? What do you love? And I mean, at least in Lisa's interpretation of it, passions are really fickle, right? Interests. Interests are fickle. They change. But often we have, like, core things that drive us nuts that really, like, get under our skin. And I haven't done the exercise myself of really tapping into, like, what's my list, but I love the idea of thinking about that like, what are the things that consistently bother me, right and and how can I think about those things that I observe and that rub me the wrong way, and then turning those into an activism that I can sustain, or an intervention that I can sustain. I don't know Candis, do you know what consistently bothers you?
Candis Watts Smith
Oh, yeah, yes. And actually, when I when I thought about them, I thought, Oh, that is that why I'm doing this other thing. Okay, so the things that bother me are unfairness, but also when people are not kind and and when people don't listen, those are things that bother me a lot, because a lot of those things, I feel like life would be easier if we just all did those things. And it perplexes me when people don't, because it's like you like when these things happen to you. I like when these things happen to you. But anyway, so in this kind of in my thinking about what bothers me, I have been pursuing this path, and I'm only really connecting the dot now that I've been like on these trainings around how to learn to listen and how to teach people how to listen. And one of those, you know, one of those tools, is improv and learning, the the kind of the the philosophy of improv. And you know that yes and like the yes and is really about how you have to listen, but then also to help make your partner look good and to be present and to, you know, cooperate, even if they kind of give you something stinky and to think from a different perspective. And so, you know, just kind of bringing it back is that's kind of what peace is, as she lays it out, right, like peace is not just the absence of, you know, violence or war or conflict. And we know that because in a in a world of like segregation, like there's not any, you know, people are separate. They're, you know, they're not doing anything to each other. But that's not ideal either. The that kind of idea that the standard for peace that she gives is a Wynette is actually higher standard than, I think what we typically think about, it's an act of engaged presence, and what it takes to sustain human and planetary flourishing anyway. So the things that bother me, I've been working on trying. Gonna get more people to unbother me about it, but a lot of it is just kind of like, how do we work with each other? How do we stay open to each other so that we can listen to each other and be kind and flourish together, so again, I can stay on this high horse that Lisa, Lisa has presented us, especially now, but then the question is, what bothers you, Cyanne?
Cyanne Loyle
I told you I haven't done the deep reflecting, but, but I would say injustice. I pay a lot of attention in my life and my work to how to stand up for people that either don't have the tools to stand up for themselves, or being in, you know, disproportionately targeted or it's a little bit different, I think, than your than your fairness assessment, but just folks that I think have gotten the short end of the stick, that really shouldn't have gotten that, and all The different reasons that that has happened. I've been thinking a lot about economic equality in the United States and and the ways in which our lives get set up differently based on the the types of families and communities that were that were born into, really independent of even identity characteristics, you know, the these kind of assumed knowledges and, you know, unwritten kind of rules and transcripts. I've been thinking a lot about that with graduate students and undergraduate students. And, you know, how do I know the things I know? Where did I learn those from? And if you haven't learned them, what does that mean? And so those are the types of things I've been addressing in my own kind of teaching practice. But I haven't thought about both teaching and research, right? So a lot of my research focuses on marginalized and underrepresented communities, mostly that are affected by by armed conflict, but then thinking about how to bring that beyond the classroom, but still on a micro level, right? What does that look like in State College, in terms of, you know, the types of organizations that I should be working with, I still need to think that through.
Candis Watts Smith
With that said, let us thank Lisa and Jenna for the interview and for Lisa's call to action, for contemplation, interpretation and imagination.
Candis Watts Smith
A message that I think many people need in this particular moment. But be that, whether you are elated or overwhelmed, that the the her offering provides guidance to, you know, make our world the kind of world that we want to see, the kind of world that people can flourish in.
Cyanne Loyle
I challenge all of you to think about what's bugging you, right, to identify what is really bothering you, and then to approach that in a yes and mindset in a creative way, to think about how you can address those things that are bugging you in your own community.
Candis Watts Smith
Thank you for listening to Democracy Works. I'm Candis Watts Smith.
Cyanne Loyle
And I'm Cyanne Loyle.